Color naming systems are designed to assign a color name to pixels in an image. Grouping pixels with the same color name defines a color region. The color region with the largest overall area often defines what humans perceive as an overall color of the image. However, the color region with the largest area may be in the background and therefore not be of interest to a human viewing the image. Typically, the overall color of the image is defined by a subject, or an object, contained in the image.
Determining the overall color of the image may be helpful in many applications. For example, images included as search results may be filtered by the overall color in the image. However, the overall color of the image may vary according to how the color regions are defined, and therefore may affect the filtering of image search results.
Existing color naming systems assign a color name to pixels in an image based on each pixel's color as it relates to a color model standard. As such, existing color naming systems assign the color name to a pixel, and group pixels of similar color, without taking into account the color name of a nearby pixel. In addition, existing color naming systems determine the color name of a pixel without considering whether or not the nearby pixel, even when a different color, relates to the same object in the image.